Perhaps people don’t pay attention to how much 2D is in our real three-dimensional world.

If I want to look something up in Google, I don’t want to make an avatar stroll through a library to a virtual microfiche. I want to type in a word and get my answer.

If I want to check my e-mail, I don’t want to make an avatar walk out a virtual front door, down the sidewalk, to a mailbox, open it, look inside, reach in, and take out the mail; and then sort it, open it, and read it. I just want to click “Check Mail.”

If I want to see a video on YouTube, I don’t want to look under a virtual sofa in a virtual living room to find a virtual remote control to turn on a virtual TV. I just want to click the video on the sidebar and watch it.

I shudder to think what a 3D virtual environment would do about checking my bank balance. Virtual standing in line? No thanks.

[...] CNN takes a look at Second Life educatorsPosted Nov 16th 2006 9:31PM by Master PenguinFiled under: Educational, NewsThere is an article up on CNN.com about educators in Second Life. To which I had a very similar reaction to as Raph Koster who titled his post about the article “Another day, another SL mention on CNN.” I kind of wish I had thought of that first because it made me chuckle. It is true Second Life is getting a lot of press lately and seemingly more press about if it should be getting so much press. But no matter your stance on the issue, I think one place Second Life deserves the coverage is in relation to education. The actual heart of the issue for me is explained in the CNN article with this statement: “The three-dimensional virtual world makes it possible for students taking a distance course to develop a real sense of community, said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School…” [...]

[...] There is an article up on CNN.com about educators in Second Life. To which I had a very similar reaction to as Raph Koster who titled his post about the article ‘Another day, another SL mention on CNN.’ I kind of wish I had thought of that first because it made me chuckle. It is true Second Life is getting a lot of press lately and seemingly more press about if it should be getting so much press. But no matter your stance on the issue, I think one place Second Life deserves the coverage is in relation to education. The actual heart of the issue for me is explained in the CNN article with this statement: ‘The three-dimensional virtual world makes it possible for students taking a distance course to develop a real sense of community, said Rebecca Nesson, who leads a class jointly offered by Harvard Law School and Harvard Extension School…’ [...]

If Michael W. is who I think he is, you might want to be more careful in your comments. The Michael W. I’m thinking about is one of the more qualified people to be making predictions in this arena.

Gotta love when people who don’t have any clue what they are talking about making such brilliant predictions. You are talking about the “web”, which is just one of many things that live on the “internet”. It is not going away, because it does its job very well. People aren’t just going to abandon the web for finding information and use something designed for social purposes that is horrible for finding information.

I dont want to bash a company but I don’t think linden will be the one to take us to that “higher plane”.